(10-05-2012 08:49 PM)houseofcantor Wrote: There ain't nothing leaving the body nowherez. It's like having a lit flashlight sitting on your desk, and the light flickers and goes out...

Look, Mommy! The light went to heaven!

Ah, no.

Where's the ontological evidence Hoc or was this just ad hoc?...........

(10-05-2012 09:37 PM)Chas Wrote:

(07-05-2012 02:33 PM)Luminon Wrote: I still stand behind my claims (as a policy of equal teaching energy-based natural afterlife philosophies and esoteric teachings), this is not a thing of energy, but of matter. There is a subtle matter as a counterpart of everything, specially living organisms. And this etheric component carries the consciousness after death. For about 36 hours, before it dissolves. Don't worry, astral body takes over after that.

Maybe the phantom DNA effect is an example of this subtle detachable counterpart of the ordinary matter. Besides my thread on orgonomy

And your evidence?

Didn't you see? There's a whole website on orgonomy - and an o-meter - so it must be true!

We know all the physical and currently measurable things. But we don't know what we don't know, hence we really can't say anything concrete.

I tend to think that our science is in it's infancy. Yes, it's quite impressive how far we have come in like 50 years. That doesn't mean we know shit yet, there are myriads of things out there we can perceive but not measure or explain yet, and my bet is that there are myriads of things out there we don't even know we don't know.

And this is one of those, things we don't know we don't know.

But there is a perception of it that no one has been able to measure, label and explain. This perception has given raise to all the concepts of what happens after death. And there are a blue zillion of these, all religions. It's one of the bases of religious belief.

Just like when people didn't know what thunder was and it was thought to be divine intervention, even when lightning rods came about the churches refused to use them because it would offend god.

I think there are things about death we do not know, and when we find out it will crumble a lot of what religions are based on.

As yet, we can't prove anything happens, and we can't prove nothing does. We can only theorize.

Research now is mostly based on defining medical condition of the body while dying. It is mostly drugged individuals that are observed by medical staff. I would love to see research conducted by the other sciences, on non-drugged individuals. But that's a bit hard to arrange. I for one would gladly volunteer for this when my time comes...

You know, what's really neat about TTA is that whatever the subject, someone comes out of the woodwork with specific professional knowledge, like Debzilla here in this thread (thank you!).

Science is the process we've designed to be responsible for generating our best guess as to what the fuck is going on. Girly Man

We can deeply investigate phenomena, and find nothing. In this and many related cases we have.

We are some way from understanding the physics of our universe. Until we understand dark matter and dark energy and can reconcile relativity with quantum mechanics we'll be missing major chunks. We also have very limited knowledge of what is outside what we would normally refer to as our universe. Still, for things that are in our backyard and things that interact with our backyard these phenomena have been investigated and excluded from our set of knowledge. It's not crazy to think about this stuff and look for new ways of proving hunches, but the likelihood we'll find something new about something as commonplace as the process of death and some new fundamental kind of energy related to the process is low. This is an old idea, and one that science started to move away from when it was found that "organic" compounds can be produced from non-living materials. The idea that there was a spark that differentiated the living and the non-living has not seen any supporting evidence that warrants a return to the idea within the scientific consensus.

One thing I will say about this thread is that using the term "energy" to describe something where you mean something like "soul" is misleading, especially when you then quote a conservation of energy law within this context. There is a clear danger of deluding one's self by dressing up an unsupported idea in the clothes of well-established ideas to lend the unsupported idea unwarranted credibility. If there is an unknown something escaping with the death of a person then there is no reason to assume it relates to the scientific concept of energy or that it would follow any conservation law until that thing is understood in some fashion. We know that information (which is what you are describing, more than energy) can't be completely destroyed, otherwise we would not have any causality. The problem of loss of information at the event horizon of a black hole lead to the concept of hawking radiation. However, information is only necessarily preserved in the sense that you could run time backwards to reconstruct the moment of death. There is no element of the conservation of information idea that would lead us to think that the information would continue to exist in a coherent form going forwards. When you drop a pebble into a bowl, the wave does not continue to hold it's shape. It degenerates into noise, and the information that was once embodied in the wave has become sound and heat. It seems likely that any imprint of the information that makes up human consciousness would suffer a similar fate. The brain rots, and if there were some other imprint it would presumably degenerate into noise also.

But I'll also say again that if people have been observing the departure of the soul for centuries, to describe it is as not measurable by science is incorrect. Either it is observable and science has had ample opportunity to test it and it's almost certainly false, or it is not observable and you can mount a "soul of the gaps" defence for its possible existence.

Give me your argument in the form of a published paper, and then we can start to talk.

Oh, but I really don't think there is a soul. A soul implies it has consciousness of some sort. I don't think there is anything of that sort. I think that as a conscious being, you are definitely gone after death. (Just what I think of course). I think it highly unikely that there is any type of memory or consciousness.

When I say energy, I mean just that. Maybe is dissipates into many small units and enters new life, like whatever comes to life in it's path (weeds sprouting, bugs being born, etc etc, and powers something here and something there til it's used up. (This is obviously more phantasy than actual theory and just given as example of a possibility).

Your body goes on to become food for worms or birds or plants whatever, everything is recycled. That doesn't mean it has some sort of consciousness. We are quite sure it doesn't.

What I am saying is that there is a possibility that there is "energy" being similairly reused and not wasted. And that proof of that would pull the carpet out from under religions.

As far as knowing everything in our backyard - I really don't think so. We don't know shit. We don't even understand our own nutrition - one year we are supposed to eat margerine as fatty condiment, then it's olive oil, then back to butter, and now lard is said to best for you. Right back where we started from decades ago.

Also, we know what we can perceive and measure and have words for to think with. Our senses, our scientific measurements and our language all limit us. Except for the senses, it all grows continuously and will continue to do so. 50 years from now people will likely use some of what we think to be true now as example of human stupidity.

Science is the process we've designed to be responsible for generating our best guess as to what the fuck is going on. Girly Man

(21-02-2012 12:37 PM)Dom Wrote: Not sure where to put this, but since I am a newbie here and I do believe that science will be providing the answer for this eventually, I am putting it here. Please feel free to move it.

I have witnessed a number of deaths now, both people and animals. And while there are things that appear to be in common, there are also a lot of individual differences.

But, regardless of causes of death and species, the one fact remains: There is an energy, and it then disappears from our view. You can pinpoint the exact second when it just disappears.

I think that there is a lot more to energy than we know at this time. Humans have researched energy for a long time, since we like to harness it to do work for us. We have found a couple of different types of energy, and combinations thereof. We can only measure energy we are aware of. I find that extremely limiting. My thinking is that we haven't even scratched the surface yet, and when we do, it will blow religion out of the water.

All the religions I have looked at presume that after death we retain a thinking, feeling consciousness. I think that something does happen after death, but that there is no consciousness of any type. I think that an energy leaves the body and goes - where? Transforms -into what? Joins other energy - of what type?

When we have that answer, the whole heaven and hell business will not have a leg to stand on. (Not that it does now....)

Just random thoughts here....

I wonder if what you mean by 'energy' in living things could be better defined as 'animation'. I once worked in a vet clinic and helped euthanize several dogs and cats. I understand what's meant by 'the life going out of them' but again, here the animal quickly lost consciousness and shut down. Muscle tone went slack, heart and breathing stopped. The potential energy was still in them, just not being converted into heat and mechanical energy anymore by the life processes. As a test, can you see the exact point that a plant dies i.e. a tree or a rosebush or some living thing that is not highly animated?

"IN THRUST WE TRUST"

"We were conservative Jews and that meant we obeyed God's Commandments until His rules became a royal pain in the ass."

(11-05-2012 11:02 AM)Carlo_The_Bugsmasher_Driver Wrote: I wonder if what you mean by 'energy' in living things could be better defined as 'animation'. I once worked in a vet clinic and helped euthanize several dogs and cats. I understand what's meant by 'the life going out of them' but again, here the animal quickly lost consciousness and shut down. Muscle tone went slack, heart and breathing stopped. The potential energy was still in them, just not being converted into heat and mechanical energy anymore by the life processes. As a test, can you see the exact point that a plant dies i.e. a tree or a rosebush or some living thing that is not highly animated?

I would say that plants do have energy, yes. They do move, just not as fast as we do. In some that is easily observed, like sunflowers turning their head towards the sun.

But I have for instance a honeysuckle shrub that was entirely inside the fence of a pasture with Llamas. The Llamas kept chewing on it. It of course didn't like that, so it started making new shoots from the ground up outside the fence. It took 4 years, but now the shrub is entirely outside the fence and the Llamas can't chew it anymore. It's an amazing thing, that, and makes you wonder about plants.

Unless they are frozen or burnt plants die very slowly. And some of them lose their entire body (above ground ) like my fig tree that gets frozen to the ground every year. In the spring it wakes up and sets new shoots and grows an entire new tree with figs until it gets frozen to the ground again. This tree is not designed to do this, it normally lives in frost free areas.

So plants do react to their environment, and there is some level of learning going on. Like the Honeysuckle figuring out that the Llamas can't get to it on the other side of the fence.

And they do move and there is energy, yes.

Animation, movement, energy - we don't have a word for what I am talking about so any of these will have to do. That which powers the being.

There is a limitation of both language and known concepts here.

Science is the process we've designed to be responsible for generating our best guess as to what the fuck is going on. Girly Man

(11-05-2012 09:52 AM)Dom Wrote: Oh, but I really don't think there is a soul. A soul implies it has consciousness of some sort. I don't think there is anything of that sort. I think that as a conscious being, you are definitely gone after death. (Just what I think of course). I think it highly unikely that there is any type of memory or consciousness.

(11-05-2012 09:52 AM)Dom Wrote: Oh, but I really don't think there is a soul. A soul implies it has consciousness of some sort. I don't think there is anything of that sort. I think that as a conscious being, you are definitely gone after death. (Just what I think of course). I think it highly unikely that there is any type of memory or consciousness.

Ah, a recycled avatar . Weird links to reincarnation?

Me too.

(11-05-2012 09:52 AM)Dom Wrote: When I say energy, I mean just that.

Like gamma rays from a fucking star dying. Girly's down with that.

(11-05-2012 07:42 PM)Mr Woof Wrote:

(11-05-2012 07:08 PM)GirlyMan Wrote: Like gamma rays from a fucking star dying. Girly's down with that.

Reincarnation, another word like soul that has too many conotations, so I don't want to use it.

But yes, a related concept, minus the traditionally attached ideas of the time after death being connected to the time before by some rhyme and reason that determines exactly as who or what this "energy" continues on.

I think that is the wrong rhyme or reason, I think it is better described as energy, or maybe rays like Girly said, merely conoting continued movement... just moving along like water finds a way to move through terrain by happenstance.....

What I am saying is that there very well may be something logical and simple that does happen to "energy" after death, and that is why every single popular religion has their god fill that gap. People have been building theories and stories around this forever.

I keep coming back to the thing about thunder and lightning, how people built all kinds of stories around that until we figured it out.

When you have something that people just don't know and that gives raise to tons of made up stories to fill the gap in knowledge, there is just that, a gap in knowledge.

Where there is a gap in knowledge, there is knowledge to fill it. We just haven't found it yet. Just saying "there is lightning because that's the way it is, there is nothing to know." is the same as saying "death is just death, there is nothing to know".

Well, I maintain there is something to know, and once it is known the made up stories will fade.

The "sheeple" may be ignorant in lots of ways, but when you have centuries of universal attempts to fill a gap of knowledge, there is a core that needs to be examined and the explanation needs to be found.

We know how the body is recycled, we don't know how "that which powers the being" is recycled. And in nature, everything is recycled, one way or another.

Find that piece of knowledge and religions will collapse, just like today the majority of theists don't even know what used to be believed about lightning and thunder. And that used to be dominating religious life a lot...

Science is the process we've designed to be responsible for generating our best guess as to what the fuck is going on. Girly Man

I go on about what I go on about concerning "after death" 'cause I love my Gwynnies and I kant do anything for her so I do everything for her like try to give others a measure of joy. (Was that a sentence? ) And my "lack of fear of death" thingy seems like something to share, so I do it; sometimes. I have found that more than a few peeps cling to their irrational fears; and mostly from a combination of "fear of thinking" and reciprocity. Like one person will be all, ooh, I'm scairt, and another will go, me, too; and mean ol' Johnny will come around and they'll be like, we don't like you 'cause you're not scairt like us!

But I cannot help but consider this stuff to be egotistical self-absorption. One of the reasons for my returning to the east was to hang with my family to see if I had gone too far in the other direction, but I feel even more suicidal and ready to end. I expected that connections would ground me yet they only seem to bring me down. Everybody's like, gotta have this, gotta do that, and money, money, money...

Of course my big problem is that I'm just too fucking in love with that dang Gwyneth.